LEGION BASEBALL: Norchester downs Boyertown for first Berks League championship

Norchester players pile on to one another after defeating Boyertown 9-2 to win the Berks County American Legion League final Wednesday night at Bear Stadium. (Kevin Hoffman/The Mercury)

BOYERTOWN — After waiting three years to bring home their first Berks County American Legion League championship, the Norchester Bulldogs didn’t mind having to endure an extra day of delay.

Norchester, which joined the Berks League in 2012, successfully ended its title quest Wednesday night at Bear Stadium by finishing off a 9-2 victory over Boyertown in the finale of the league’s double-elimination tournament.

The Bulldogs (31-8), who were leading 7-2 in the bottom of the seventh when the contest was suspended by weather Tuesday night, tacked on a sacrifice fly by Dave Clay and RBI single by Noah Beebe in the eighth inning and got two shutout innings from Steve Muscovitch to close it out.

Clay finished 2-for-4 with four RBI, Collin McCourt was 2-for-2 with two runs and Jeff Zebrowski was 2-for-5 with two runs for Norchester, which continues its season Saturday in the Pennsylvania Region 2 Tournament at Muhlenberg’s Gochnauer Field — where the Bulldogs open against Northampton League champ Bath at approximately 12:30 p.m.

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“Hats off to the guys,” Bulldogs coach Rick Harrison said. “Any time you can come in a tough venue like here and win, especially in a championship setting, it’s a great accomplishment.”

Norchester had won the league’s regular season crown with a 15-2 mark, but with only the Berks playoff champ moving on to the state regional, the Bulldogs knew they had to produce when it counted.

Thanks to a deep starting pitching staff headed by Sean Esch, Muscovitch, Dylan Gallagher and Kutter Endy; an air-tight defense spearheaded by shortstop Collin McCourt and speedy centerfielder Jeff Zebrowski; and a veteran lineup led by top five hitters Zebrowski, Troy Salerno, Clay, Noah Beebe and Dylan Gallagher, it was mission accomplished for the Bulldogs.

“Everyone’s together; it’s just one big unit,” said Clay, the squad’s starting catcher. “Our pitching and fielding is phenomenal, and when our bats get going it’s a big plus. It’s tough to beat us when everything’s going.

“We knew that the regular season was (about) just getting us ready for this. Coach preaches that the playoffs are what matters. If you’re not playing your best baseball in the playoffs, then whatever you did in the regular season doesn’t mean anything.”

While the Bulldogs (who won four straight Region 3 titles from 2006-09) will be making their first Region 2 tourney appearance, the Bears (30-10) will regroup for the Pennsylvania State Tournament July 29-Aug. 2, in which they have a bid as the host squad.

“Going through this past week, we weren’t on top of our game by any means, but the kids never let down,” Boyertown coach Rick Moatz said. “As poorly as we were in some of the aspects of our game, they fought back from the loser’s bracket and made it to the final game. Hopefully we can get things together in the next week and a half.”

The title game was the fifth encounter between the Bulldogs and Bears, who have won a record 31 Berks championships. Norchester won all three regular season meetings before Boyertown rallied for a 10-7, 11-inning victory to stay alive in Game 13 of the tourney Sunday night.

“Every time we play Boyertown it’s a tough one,” Clay said. “I mean, they’re a great group of guys; we have a lot of respect for them. We love coming out to play them. They play hard, we play hard. They make the plays, we make the plays. It’s a fun time. We knew today they were going to come out and fight. They’re not just a team to lie down. We knew we had to keep the pressure on and get the job done.”

Before the game was halted by lightning and then eventually suspended by rainy conditions Tuesday, the Bulldogs had plated five runs in the bottom of the seventh to break a 2-2 tie.

Salerno drew a bases-loaded walk with one out, then Clay followed with a two-run single to left to make it 5-2.

Three batters later, Alex Condello drew a bases-loaded walk to force in another run, and Blake McCourt delivered an RBI infield single before the game was stopped with Ben Condello at the plate with an 0-2 count, two outs and the bases loaded.

When play resumed Wednesday, Condello worked the count full before reliever Matt McCarney got him to pop to short to end the inning.

Boyertown then got a one-out single by Quinn Hair in the eighth, but Tyler Comport’s bullet that was going through on the right side hit Hair for a tough-luck out that effectively short-circuited the threat.

After Norchester struck for its final two runs in its eighth, the Bears put two men on with nobody out in the final frame before Muscovitch got three straight groundouts to set off a celebratory dogpile at the mound.

“We knew this was a competitive league when we made the decision to move here (from Chester County),” Harrison said. “Our first year, we started a lot of these guys as 15-year-olds, and this is kind of the culmination of them playing together and sticking together, and it’s nice to see.

“I told these guys I feel sorry for some of these kids that all they do is trend toward the travel and showcase baseball, because anybody that’s been around these playoffs this past week has seen the competitiveness and quality of baseball, and all those little things that make this league and this championship special.”

Norchester had taken a 2-0 lead in the first inning Tuesday on Clay’s RBI infield single and Dylan Gallagher’s RBI double.

The Bears finally broke the ice against Bulldogs ace Sean Esch in their half of the seventh, when with two outs Luke Stong singled to left, Cory Fox doubled to right and McCarney’s Texas Leaguer to shallow center slipped out of the glove of a diving Zebrowski for a game-tying two-run single.

Esch, the league’s Pitcher of the Year, struck out seven and allowed four hits over seven innings.

“When we got here, we knew that we had to take care of what we had to do,” Clay said. “Our pitchers did their job, our hitters came around and we made the plays we had to.”

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Boyertown, which was seeking its first league title since 2011, had won three straight elimination games after Friday’s 8-4 winners’ bracket semifinal loss to Exeter to reach the final, an experience Moatz felt can only help in states. “It’s a benefit,” he said. “I mean, some teams get in a tight situation like that in a tournament and fold. As poorly as we played at times, we didn’t fold, and we got to the last game. If you learn anything from baseball, it’s that you have to forget certain things and just move on — and that’s what we’re going to look to do.” ... Fox went 2-for-2 with one run and McCarney was 2-for-4 with two stolen bases and two RBI for the Bears, who used a quartet of pitchers in Bauman, Pavlik, McCarney and Andrew Bauer.